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Monday, February 27, 2012

Our challenge this week in the Beyond Layers course was to play with photoshop brushes. The wording is a
brush from Kim Klassen's collection, that you stamp onto your photo. Since I was able to spend some
time with my smallest grandson trying to get some good photos, I
decided this was the perfect photo to use. He just turned 1 year old and is always on
the go...

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Another
busy, but fun week. I did manage to get some photographs taken for the challenge. The themes this week were: Crossed, A Glimpse, Handwritten, Bliss, & Gray.

1. Crossed - pieces of driftwood

2. A Glimpse - into the past at the Shipshewana Antique Auction, Shipshewana, Indiana. If you have never been to Shipshewana, it's a place you have to go. Every Wednesday they have the antique auction and it is quite a crazy event. In the summer they also have the famous flea market every Tuesday and Wednesday.

3. Handwritten - I dug out an old (very old-1929) report card that belonged to my Mother. In those days, everything was hand written.

4. Bliss - The definition of bliss is "happiness" and I'm the happiest when I'm with my family, especially one or more of my grandsons. This week I unfortunately wasn't able to be with all of them, but the littlest one definitely fills us with bliss.

5. Gray - It's easy to find "gray" this time of year, but there is still a beauty in gray skies and the half frozen lake we see when looking out our windows.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

In my online course Kim Klassen's "Beyond Layers", this was the lesson for Day 10...

...Turning a photograph into a "Painterly Effect" adding textures and layer adjustments. This is a photo I took about 6 weeks ago while passing a quite unique open garage. It's not often you see an airplane being stored along side a classic car.

I used the techniques outlined in Kim's tutorial: High Pass Filter, adjustment layers - Hue/Saturation, Color Fill, Levels, textures - finale &amp; sienna with the saturation lowered, blending modes on both were multiply. You'll notice that I eliminated the air conditioner on the wall...I felt it was distracting to the image.

Here is the original photo after a little tweaking in Adobe Camera Raw, but before the final editing.

1. Love - What can I say...my grandson getting some love from his Daddy.

2. Duplicated - It may look like the horns on these bulls are duplicated, but actually the two bulls were standing with their heads aligned. I pulled this one from last summer's archives.

3. Trend or Trending - I thought I would experiment with a trend in photography that I came across... High Dynamic Range photography (HDR).Basically it's the process of taking multiple exposures and merging them together into a single 32 bit image. Here is a tutorial I found from the Photoshop Cafe.

The top photo is the merged photo which uses a larger range of tones that can show all the details in the shadows and highlights of all 3 images below it.

Another example:

4. Paper - Happy Presidents' Day...I came across a box of very old newspaper pages and photos of Abraham Lincoln. (I thought the subject was appropriate for this week). The box belonged to my Mother who probably had collected them for some art project she was working on. The date on most of the papers was 1963...49 years ago. (I hear you, I don't know why I'm saving them either, since I'm not a saver).

5. Plastic- A plastic fern in one of my favorite artificial arrangements.

Monday, February 13, 2012

In the Beyond Layers class this week's challenge was to create a mini-studio and compose an interesting story to photograph. We were to try the gradient map technique, or a hue/sat adjustment layer and experiment with selective editing and layer masks. One of my goals for the class is to expand not only my Photoshop techniques, but also my photo taking skills. So while I really love creating arrangements, I really want to focus on seeing creative compositions that are already there in my surroundings. So I will photograph one of each type...one natural arrangement and one created. Here is the "found arrangement". More to come...

Sunday, February 5, 2012

It has been a super crazy week and I wasn't sure if I was going to get my photos uploaded, but I made it. The themes this week are: Strike a Pose, Footwear, Hobby, Shiny and Color Me Green. Have a SUPER Sunday.... My team, the Colts had a bad year, so I'm happy with whichever team wins!! It's exciting to have the game in Indiana. If you haven't ever been to Indianapolis, it's an awesome town. All three of our children live there and love it...

1. Strike a Pose - I had my hair cut this week and talked my awesome hairdresser into posing for a photo. She is just a doll.

2. Footwear - These are the shoes on a cherished item from the past, my Mother's antique doll that she played with as a child. The doll has a porcelain face and leather body. I'm amazed it has held up all of these years. I added a texture from Kim Klassen Cafe collection.

3. Hobby - This one is tough for me because I have many hobbies. I love interior decorating, bicycling, kayaking, crafts, floral designing, fitness...but my favorite passion right now is taking photographs and learning as much as I can about photography.